Little Bets
  • Published: 15 January 2012
  • ISBN: 9781847940490
  • Imprint: Random House Business
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 224
  • RRP: $32.00

Little Bets

How breakthrough ideas emerge from small discoveries

Formats & editions
EBook
5 May 2011
Paperback
15 Jan 2012
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Achieve momentous innovation by making Little Bets

How can errors produce perfection?
How can failure fuel ambition?
How can confusion enhance creativity?

The answer: little bets.

The little bets approach is about using negativity to positive effect. If your plans fall apart, refine them; if you don’t know where best to begin, just begin somewhere. Every decision is a risk: take a chance and see what happens.

In Little Bets, leading business consultant Peter Sims turns problems on their heads and outlines a counter-intuitive path to perfection. Using real-life case studies from the worlds of business, design, warfare and even comedy, he shows that it can be more rational to act first and think later, more efficient to fail and find out what doesn’t work. It’s a flexible philosophy that has both saved corporate giants such as Apple and Pixar and inspired the third-world microfinancing industry.

When success is the only acceptable outcome, Little Bets advocates a bold and radical approach in which failure is good, questions are solutions, and excellence is not a means but an end.
  • Published: 15 January 2012
  • ISBN: 9781847940490
  • Imprint: Random House Business
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 224
  • RRP: $32.00
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About the author

Peter Sims

PETER SIMS is the co-author with Bill George of the Wall Street Journal and BusinessWeek bestselling book True North. His work has appeared in the Harvard Business Review, Fortune and TechCrunch and he is a contributor to the Reuters and Harvard Business Review blogs. He received an MBA from Stanford Business School, where he and several classmates established a popular course on leadership. He has spoken or advised at such organisations as Cisco Systems, Eli Lilly, Current Media, Molson Coors, Qualcomm and Frost & Sullivan. He previously worked in venture capital with Summit Partners, a leading investment company, and was part of the team that established the firm's London office. He is founder of BLK SHP Enterprises, Inc., with an innovation advisory services arm called BLK SHP Innovation. His latest book is Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries.

Praise for Little Bets

Highly engaging ... Little Bets will help you challenge the status quo and discover extraordinary new possibilities in whatever endeavor you're engaged in

Howard Schultz, Chairman and CEO of Starbucks

An enthusiastic, example-rich argument for innovating in a particular way

Wall Street Journal

Want a big idea? Start little. Whether you're an entrepreneur or an artist, Peter Sims shows you how big breakthroughs start with little bets

Chip Heath, author of Made to Stick and Switch

Little Bets is easily the most delightful and useful innovation book published in the last decade

Robert I. Sutton, author of Good Boss, Bad Boss

Put [t]his book on your reading list

TechCrunch

Diverse and uplifting - a veritable gumball machine of memorable anecdotes to inspire creativity

Kirkus Reviews

Genius may be rare but that doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t approach greatness through keenly observed trial and error. Such is the rallying cry of this practical and very readable book

Daily Mail

I have always believed that constant innovation is core to success. The methods Peter Sims provides in the highly engaging Little Bets will help you challenge the status quo and discover extraordinary new possibilities in whatever endeavor you're engaged in.

Howard Schultz, Chairman and CEO of Starbucks